Tag Archives: new

So. As of Monday, I will officially be working two jobs in an effort to claw myself out of my overdraft. The one in the Weatherspoon’s kitchen, and then one 13 hours a week selling shoes in Shoe Zone in Lancaster. I am psyched to start the new job – I can do this job. I worked in Stead and Simpson’s for a year while I was in sixthform. The two shops are owned by the same overall company. The pay is less than in Weatherspoon’s, but it’s going to be less work. Working in ‘Spoons is, for lack of a better word, harrowing. Being on your feet for stints of up to 10 hours in one go just isn’t fun. And yeah, I know that work is work and it isn’t meant to be fun, but having a job that stresses me out as much as the ‘Spoon’s one wasn’t healthy. So getting to do much less of it is awesome.

The tricky part is going to be juggling what shifts I get where, so I’m not working a ridiculous combination of hours. If both sets of management could sort rotas out enough in advance it’d be great, but alas, I am yet to know when I’ll be working in spoons next week. If only I could get set hours, standard each week.

Hopefully, this means that I’ll be bringing enough money home to get out of my overdraft, and climb slowly into the positive numbers. Each penny I save brings me closer to achieving what I outlined in my last post.

I’m still looking for and applying for jobs, too. Ideally I’d have two part time retail jobs. The Body Shop are hiring at the moment – I’d love to be able to have that job and the Shoe Zone one and tell ‘Spoon’s where they can stick it. So I’m still keeping my beady eye open on the look out to see what I can spot. Anyone knowing of anything going, let me know!

In other news, things with Chris and me are going well. We’ve become ‘Facebook Official’ now, though we were officially a couple long before we got round to changing our statuses on FB. He’s away at Download until Monday, and I miss him. I see this as a good sign.

Been really spending a lot of time with friends from RocSoc recently, it’s great. Having two separate sets of friends and then seeing them merge as I invite them all to various things, like the BBQ we had a few weeks ago. I love seeing new friendships form amongst people that I like. The overlap of people is growing and it pleases me.

Like this:

I’m sure a lot of you will have heard me ramble on about this before, but I want to start my own business. For a long time it’s what I’ve wanted to do. When I was younger I looked up to , my wonderful, hardworking and dedicated mother. She took a huge risk and picked up a failing business (a Newsagent in a small, seaside village), dusted it off and turned it into her livelihood for several years. The shop has been closed for a while now, the recession biting at the heels of a stumbling business, already trying to deal with other problems, such as competition and people.

Now, I don’t want to follow directly in her footsteps. I don’t want to become the proprietor of a newsagent or sweetshop in a village. I want to run my own successful internet cafe. It would be more than just an internet cafe – it would specialize in LAN gaming and online gaming. Ideally there’d be the opportunity for me to run Friday Night Magic there, too. But I don’t want a small, dark, grotty basement. I want a shop where non-gamers would also feel comfortable coming and browsing the internet with a cup of coffee for an hour.

My idea came from visiting Swansea one day when I was in 6th form and missing a train home. I needed something to do for two hours to kill time before the next train home, and so I went into Crossfire. They have 56 computers there, 15 for web browsing and 41 for gaming. They are all networked together and they all have super-fast broadband.

I want to spread this wonderful idea. I want to bring it to Lancaster. I can almost see it – casual internet cafe/coffee shop in the day, hardcore gaming lair in the night.

There is already somewhere in Lancaster that offers this service, but I’ll give anyone who can name the place and the location 50 points. They operate in a small, slightly underground and very unappealing premises. I went there last year so I could play WoW alongside someone (damn campus rooms having only one internet connection) and they told me that their computers weren’t equipped to deal with WoW and their internet connection couldn’t deal with it either. Competition, of a sorts, but I’m convinced I could do it better.

The main hurdle I have is money. Of course it is – so many people would do so much if money wasn’t a worry. Premises, utilities, equipment – it’s all expensive. Also, technical knowledge – I don’t know the first thing about computer networks. The thing is, this idea has been plaguing me for four years now. I can’t make it go away. I can hide it in a cupboard for a while, but eventually it’ll find the handle on the inside and be out there again, nagging and niggling at me. So much so, in fact, that I’ve bought a ‘Start your own business’ book, and am writing this LJ post for people to comment on my idea.

I want, maybe more than anything, to be in Lancaster with the people that I care about and love. I’m having doubts about university – I’ve already made two goes at it, why should the third be any more successful? I want to do something that interests me, that makes me feel like I’m giving a service to satisfied customers. I want to get to know my regular customers and I want to be in control of something Big. Something Important (to me at least).

At the moment, just musings and ideas, but ones that won’t go and sit on the shelf like obedient ideas – ones that really want playing with and exploring and testing. Stay tuned to hear more in the future.

Like this:

So, after nearly a week on the new tablets, I finally got a decent night’s sleep last night after taking the absolute maximum amount of sleeping tablets allowed by the box. This made me sleep in until half one, which was a tad disappointing (because I wanted to go for lunch as usual). But, it was great to get a full night’s sleep for once.

I’ve been having horrendous insomnia, not falling asleep after lying in bed for hours, and then waking up very early, without having had enough sleep. This is not fun when it happens once, let alone after it reoccurs several days in a row.

It’s been an interesting week. I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with people that I wouldn’t necessarily spend time with on a regular basis otherwise. Monday night was Adam’s birthday, which was good fun – there were a lot of people there, including people who I know buy name/sight but that’s it, so I feel I got to know them a bit better.

Tuesday I went onto campus and had lunch (something I failed to do on Monday due to not realising where the usual suspects would be on a non-termtime lunch hour). Also met with Locrecia and Mair to do social sec related plotting. Look out LURPS, next term will be FUN. After that, I came home and started feeling pretty low. Did my best to stave it of by trying to not be on my own as much as possible – ate in spoons with Adam and Paul D. Went home still feeling pretty low but at least I had saved myself an hour or two of being alone.

Wednesday was a good day, Spent it in the company of Mr Slee and Mr B (aka the Craigs) and learned some very interesting things about LURPS and its members *cackles wildly*. After spending most of the day with these wonderful gentlemen, I went to pizza hut with some of the more ‘usual crowd’ including Simon, Mew and Stu.

At this point I was really feeling the lack of sleep. Agitated and nervy, I wanted out of pizza hut and to be at home with the right tools for the job of relieving the tension and pain inside me. But I was convinced to stay by the food (mmm pizza) and then by my friends – people telling me how good the film was (and they were right.) As much as I wanted to go home and be able to cry and cut myself and make the world seem smaller, I knew that this was not the right choice. It wasn’t what I should be doing. So I stayed, and went to the film, and then came home and took the sleeping pills.

Today, after waking up at half past one and being slightly disorientated for a while, I realised that it was a really quite beautiful day outside, and so went to Williamson Park (one of my favourite places in Lancaster). I sat for a while and thought about what I want to write, made a few notes, then spend nearly an hour talking with Andrew about various things of no great importance.

Every time I am there, I get blown away with the wonder of Williamson Park. Such a beautiful place – I am resolved to go there more often while the weather is acceptable. Might make it a daily thing on my way back from lunch on campus. If I make it a routine then it will help me get out of the house, something which has seemed quite pointless on several occasions since I stopped studying.

So, to the point of the post at last. I thought that Easter at Lancaster would be quite a boring thing, quite lonely and generally bad for my health, but no. It has been wonderful so far, spending time with people out of my usual ‘circle of friends’ and seeing that maybe I need to redefine the circle. I’ve met new people and discovered that I can feel things that I didn’t know I could anymore.

Now I’m looking forward to Locrecia’s housewarming tomorrow and Sanctuary on Saturday – both opportunities to find myself in the company of a certain someone who I like to be in the company of at the moment, and of course a whole load of other wonderous people.